


Dog Days (More Like Two Weeks)

by qupecupid



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 1939 technically, 1940s, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, I took some liberties on the timeline wwii was very complicated, Kissing, M/M, One Shot, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-World War II Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Roommates, Secret Relationship, Soft Kisses, being gay in 1939 was not cool and im salty as hell these boys just love each other so heckin much, theres a dog and she is perfect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 16:59:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16769212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qupecupid/pseuds/qupecupid
Summary: It's the 1939, and Steve adopts a stray dog to live in their apartment. Bucky is far from thrilled, but soon the pupper grows on him.Epilogue - Steve continues to try and help Bucky remember the sweeter things he forgot; life is too short for only bitterness, anyway, especially if you get a second chance at it.





	Dog Days (More Like Two Weeks)

_ November, 1939 _

“No way in hell.” Bucky crossed his arms.

“How can you say no to this face?” Steve lifted the mutt of a dog he had in his arms to be level with Bucky’s gaze.

The dog yapped.

“No.”

“C’mon, Buck.”

“I get that the thing’s cute, but we ain't got the money for it.” Bucky made to scoop the dog out of Steve’s arms.

“We can wing it- we’ll figure it out.”

“Dogs cost more than a part-time bus boy’s gonna make.” Bucky began walking for the door of their ground floor apartment, old wood creaking under his feet.

“I won’t get lonely so much. You can stay out, you don't have to worry about me.” Steve tried and failed to stand in Bucky’s way, easily nudged aside.

“Look, we’re not keeping it.” Bucky pulled the door open to their own corner of alleyway, intending to return it to whatever box Steve had pulled it out of, overcome with sympathy, the damn sap. “I can’t take care of both of you.”

“You won't have to-”

Steve was cut off by a sudden far off rumble. It had started to rain. Raining hard, too, cats and dogs rain. Bucky stood, utterly defeated in the doorway, a tiny dog still in his hands.

“We can't leave it out in the rain,” Steve said in his most reasonable tone. 

Bucky sighed heavily. He looked at the puppy. The puppy made a kind of excited sneeze.

“You’re a damn lucky dog, you know that?” He said to it.

The dog licked his nose.

“She likes you.” Steve offered.

Bucky looked at the ceiling as if to ask God why he was stuck with the least pragmatic and most compassionate person in the world.

“It can stay until the rain stops,” Bucky said finally.

“You mean it?”

“Yeah, sure, I meant it.” Bucky handed the dog back over. “But after that, it’s out, so don't get attached.”

\--

Steve got attached.

“You named it  _ Sugar _ ?” Bucky set a rain-damp bag of groceries down on their one square foot of kitchen counter. 

“I named  _ her _ Sugar. She’s sweet enough for it.” 

“She’s only been here a day.” 

“And she's been real good about not wrecking the place, she ain’t really a puppy, almost a full dog.”

“She’s too small to be an adult.”

“So am I.” 

“Good point.” Bucky smiled in spite of himself. 

The whole building had been hit hard by the rain, and leaks sprung up all around their apartment. Steve had done a great job keeping the place from falling apart, Bucky pointed out, but it still meant the air was too damp to keep anything truly dry, and that meant being freezing cold. Various mugs and bowls had been balanced around the place to keep the miniature waterfalls at bay. After dinner, the two of them camped out in front of the kitchen stove, wet shoes drying, a pile of blankets around them, making the most of the driest place in the house. The dog, who hadn’t barked too much all together, and seemed more grateful for a warm place to sleep, had followed them to have her head scratched. 

“So why’d you name her Sugar?” Bucky yawned, coming to terms with the fact that if he wanted a full night's sleep, it meant a sore back from the kitchen floor.

Steve shrugged. “I like sweet things.” Steve carefully spoke the next few words. “It’s why I like you.”

Bucky smiled sleepily. “You think I’m sweet?”

“Sure I do.”

“Too schmaltzy for your own good, you know that?” Bucky pushed his shoulder.

Steve made to push Bucky’s hand away, smiling. There was a moment where Bucky’s hand slid by his, and Steve could link through his fingers. Bucky let their hands drop between them, onto the pile of pillows they had amassed. Then the moment was over, Bucky pulled his hand away to push a lock of hair out of his face, and they went back to being half asleep, still leaning against lower kitchen cabinets. The dog snored, they discovered, but neither could quite bring themselves to care, she was such a doll. Steve looked over at Bucky. His eyes were closed, his chin tilted up. He looked happier than Steve had seen him over the past few days. The dog had seemed to help general morale. 

Bucky’s skin glowed softly with its just fading tan, making summer seem not so far off. Maybe that’s why Steve couldn't seem to keep warm without him. Bucky opened his eyes a slice. 

“What?”

“You’re collar's half up.” Steve noticed the uneven fold. He began to reach for it, pressing the up-end down with one hand, the other on Bucky’s leg. He had just smoothed it down when Bucky took Steves hand in his, flat against his chest. 

“We’re not going to anywhere,” Bucky smiled softly. “You don't have to fix it.”

“I like to.”

“I could just take the shirt off,” Bucky joked.

Steve rolled his eyes. 

Bucky laughed again. Just watching him glow in the firelight, Steve felt one of the now-familiar rushes of just being around Bucky, the kind he had had since they were sophomores in high school. Without thinking, Steve used Bucky’s fixed collar to pull him forward, pressing them into a kiss. Eyes closed, Steve felt Bucky’s hand at his back, letting the electricity between them really connect. When he pulled away, Bucky was much closer than he had been before. Their knees touched. 

Bucky’s smile was brighter. 

“What?” 

“Nothing,” Bucky pressed his tongue against the inside of his lower lip, looking at Steve with a kind of shine. “Just sometimes I forget how much I like doing that.”

\--

_ “...In an even more concerning development, Nazi forces continue west…”  _ Such was the radio those days. Steve said he hoped the States would jump in and at least try to help. Bucky said the US wouldn’t do anything ‘till it got really serious. The dog had been at their place for a week, the few times the rain had stopped having been met with Steve’s insistence that they should wait to make sure the rain wouldn't start up again. It always did. Sugar was much older than they thought at first, having had her looked at by a friend while walking through the park. She ate mostly the chicken scraps Bucky left after dinner and was entertained by Steve’s naturally dotting tendencies. She had proven to be a lap dog in her own right, anyway. 

Bucky had not held quiet the budget he wanted that week, and what little money Steve made hadn’t been enough to help. 

One rain-streaked sunset found Bucky sitting alone on the back steps. Steve had been in the bath when he got home, and he took the time to himself to think. He tried not to get too worried. Just as he was moving to get back up, Sugar came snuffling around the corner to nudge at his hands.

“Hey, Sugar.” He said softly. “What’s cookin', girly?”

She woofed.

“Yeah?” Bucky tilted his head. Just then he heard steves footsteps around the corner. He smiled. Turning back to the dog, Bucky said.

“What's that? You like Steve? Tell you what, I like him, too. An awful lot, Sugar. You know we've been friends since we were kids? Don't know why I stick with him, he's always getting beaten up, but you know, he’s really something else. Never knew a better person in my life.”

“You can stop now.” He heard Steve call from the adjacent room. 

“Don't know what you’re talking about!” Bucky called back. “I’m talking to Sugar. This has nothing to do with you!”

Steve started laughing. “I’m glad you two are finally getting along.”

“When have we not?” Bucky ruffled Sugar’s fur. 

\--

They decided to hang onto the dog just for a bit longer, maybe through winter, just so she had a place to stay. Steve made out like he'd won some great argument. Bucky told him to watch it.

Monday, when Bucky came home from work, he seemed more somber than usual. Even as he joked with friends at work, the good-natured teasing about his perpetual bachelordom made him skittish sometimes. The guilt got to both of them now and again. The knowing that neither of their parents would want the living the way there were, doing what they did. 

Bucky crashed onto the couch, kicking off his shoes as he sometimes did.

“Everything alright?” Steve knew he had to tread lightly when it got like this. They both did. 

“What are we doing, Steve?” Bucky pulled a hand through his hair; it was getting too long.

“We’re living together,” Steve said from his spot on the other side of the couch, sleeping dog on his lap. 

“You know what I mean.” Bucky looked sideways at him. “What are we?”

It was rhetorical, Steve knew, but he wanted to give a real answer.

“We’re two people in an apartment with a dog.”

“What’s the dog got to do with it?”

“Don’t you ever just wanna be normal? Like normal people with a dog?” Steve asked.

“Sure I want to be normal. But that ain't in the cards for us.”

“We could make it out like it is, with a dog, and a white picket fence, all that.”

“Where in this crappy apartment are we gonna put a white picket fence?” Bucky laughed.

“I have no idea.” Steve smiled.

Bucky laughed more to himself. “We can get a fancy electric stove, while we’re at it.”

“And a car.”

“And a better ceiling.” Bucky nodded at the cracked bowl at their feet, trying to stop the latest leak from hurting the floor too much.

Steve let his head lean against one of Bucky’s warm shoulders. 

Bucky leaned his cheek against Steve’s head.

“Cold?” Bucky asked.

“Not really.”

“Just say you’re cold.”

“Fine.” Steve laughed. “I’m cold.”

“I can help with that,” Bucky said, wrapping his arms around Steve’s smaller frame, pulling him closer to lean on his chest.

Steve took a minute then, just to listen to Bucky’s heartbeat. 

“She’s a good dog,” Bucky admitted.

“See?”

“Alright, alright, don't get too excited. I just mean she's alright, for a dog, that we don't need.”

“You love her.”

“Fine, I love her. She the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen- besides you, of course.”

“That’s my line.”

“Finders keepers.”

Steve snorted. 

The dog hopped off Steves legs with a soft thud onto their one good carpet. She was just trotting off to the kitchen when Steve felt Bucky's warm breath against his neck. Soft kisses followed a moment of hesitation, just tingling down Steve’s spine. 

“I thought you were upset?” Steve mumbled.

“Not so much. Not at you, anyway.” Bucky whispered back. 

Steve sighed at a particularly involved kiss held against the underside of his jaw, leaning back against Bucky’s chest. 

“So you’re not sad or anything?”

“Don't think I could be ever sad for long around you, Stevie.”

\--

Steve remembered the day they first saw the MISSING poster, all hand drawn and hopeful, out there in the last break before the first snow. They had just taken the dog out for a walk in the window of sunshine, barely used to the routine. 

“Gonna give her up?” Bucky asked him.

“I have to. She’s not really our dog if she’s missing.”

“You could just steal her,” Bucky suggested. 

“Buck-”

“I'm kidding, I’m kidding.”

“No, I was gonna say don’t encourage me.”

Bucky laughed. “You’re all about rule breaking, arentcha?”

“I’m about justice,” Steve mumbled. 

“Sure thing, punk.”

Hey

But they gave Sugar back. Steve was glad, too, for a good deed just before the holidays kicked off. Sugar wasn't really called Sugar, she was called Polly, and she belonged to a little girl with red curls and freckles who just about cried when Steve brought her back. The little girl's mother thanked him over and over, even after he said he was “just trying to do the right thing, ma’am.” She even gave him five dollars for his troubles.

“Five whole dollars?” Bucky got a sort of boyish twinkle in his eyes at the idea of five dollars. “We could do a whole mess of things with five dollars.”

“What happened to you being responsible? Why don't we just try and fix the house?”

“That’s dull, let's go to ten movies or something. A baseball game. Or burgers!”

“You've been so worried about money, you've got me worried, and we should really try and, you know, conserve this.”

“We can't pass up good luck!” Bucky half reasoned.

Steve looked doubtful. “We lost Sugar, who I had to fight you for, but five dollars is blown just like that?”

“Ok what if we use some of the money for the house, and some of it for one of my ideas?”

Steve sighed. “Fine.”

“Really?”

“Sure.”

“You pick the movie then.” Bucky smiled, leaning on the counter in his handsome way. “No romantic girly thing, though.”

“What about Scarface again?”

“It’s a date.” Bucky grinned. He hopped his way out of the room.

“A date?” Steve called after him.

“Sure. Get all dolled up. The theatre three blocks over is showing it. I saw on my way home. We’ll go tonight.”

“Dolled up how?”

“Wear that blue shirt you got; it looks swell on you.”

Steve smiled. 

The first barely-there snow of the season had begun outside, more like sleet than anything. It would be nice to spend a warm, dry evening in the theatre with Bucky to lean into- there in the dark, where no one could see them. They could lace hands and pretend. Pretend to be any average couple of people, even without a dog, or a white picket fence. Just be themselves, just for a moment. 

Present Day

“Buck?” Steve asked across the living room of his new apartment, new clean wood, new fluorescent lighting, and the one huge couch Bucky had been spending most of his time on, wrapped in a blanket, quieter than Steve was ever going to really get used to.

Bucky looked up from the TV, a strand of hair falling into his eyes from where it was pulled back.

“Yeah?”

Steve hesitated. “Do you remember when we got a dog?”

It was always a long shot with specific details, but Steve could hope, he could at least try. Even if things were never the same again, it would be nice to share memories at least, just a bit more. 

“It was only for a bit.” Steve tried again. “Maybe two weeks.”

Bucky looked at his good hand, the only one left, squinting. Presently, he looked back up.

“Yeah… yeah, I think so.” He curled his fingers, then released them. “Sugar, right?” He looked up hopefully.

Steve felt his pulse quicken.

“Was I right?” Bucky looked so uncertain. 

“Yeah. We called her Sugar.”

“I think…” Bucky started, he pressed his lips together, old conversations just beyond his reach. 

Steve sat next to him on the couch, closer then maybe he usually would. 

“I think I remember,” Bucky almost smiled. “You found her. It.. it was raining. You said you named her that… because you like sweet things.”

“Yeah,” Steve crossed his proverbial fingers, smiling without really meaning to. “Yeah, I did. Remember anything else?”

Bucky smiled, really and truly, for only a moment, but it was enough for Steve. “You said you thought I was sweet… That’s why you said you liked me.”

“I still think that.”

“‘Course you do.” Bucky murmured, for a moment in time, just himself again. “Such a damn sap.”

**Author's Note:**

> A dear friend commissioned this from me and said “I want them to have a dog and I want her to be named Sugar cause I headcanon Steve likes sweet things.” And I was like hoooooo boy sign me up. This is the single cheesiest thing I've ever written but it turns out in the 1940s cheesy meant cheap?? And grandstander means show off. The more you know, kids. I've been gone, hopefully I'll be back, Imma try and write more oneshots to combat writer’s block. As always, I am trying to get better so if you cringe at any point tell me why in the comments! I want to know. Love you for reading this!  
> xoxo, Stella
> 
> P.S. look up 1940s slang if you haven't before it's wild


End file.
